A Definitive Ranking of Fruits

How does one rank the majesty of a mountain? Or the serenity of a babbling brook? Or the communal beauty of a school of fish, swimming as a single unit despite its thousands of individual members with unique hopes and dreams and ambitions? The short answer is: One cannot. The long answer is: Lol, fuck off, this is the internet and anything is possible. That’s why I'm ranking all the fruits.

We’ve looked at more easily rankable stuff in the past here—fast-food French fries, soul food items, the Shake Shack menu—but it’s a different, infinitely more ludicrous ballgame acting as judge and jury for something that predates humans. Mother Earth spit fruits up from the dirt millions of years ago with no intention of being judged, and I respect that.

That said, all rankings, at their core, are just means for us to maximize our enjoyment out of life. We are all constantly ranking stuff in our own minds even if we don’t realize it. If Rocky IV and Rocky II are on TV at the same time, you know to flip to Rocky IV because it’s a better movie and you’ve preloaded that judgment in your mind. The same concept applies when choosing between an apple and an orange at the Holiday Inn Express complimentary breakfast buffet. You absolutely can, and should, compare apples to oranges.

Like all other super important things, ranking fruit is difficult. There are thousands of species of fruit in the world, and since we have other important #journalism to get to, I had to narrow it down. I took a trip to mt local big-chain grocery store—shout out to Ralph’s!—and wrote down all the varieties of fruit they carry, while excluding some exotics in the process. Pluots and kumquats are cool, but they aren’t exactly accessible. I also added in some common fruits that were not available because of seasonality. It would have been a travesty to leave cherries out of a fruit list.

I must also clarify that I'm using the socially accepted definition of fruit, as opposed to the botanical definition. Yeah, I know tomatoes and pumpkins and avocados and zucchini and olives are technically fruits. But, if you ordered a fruit salad and it came with cubes of pumpkin, you’d probably be pissed.

The actual ranking was more intuitive than scientific, but some rules were established. The main judgment of the fruit must be based off its pure, whole form, though common uses of that fruit may be used in the event of a tiebreaker. I also operated under the assumption that you are not some sort of ripeness savant, and that you sometimes may have to deal with under or overripe fruit. Consistency, convenience, flavor, and texture were the main deciding factors.

Enough with the qualifiers and methodology already—here is the only ranking of fruits you should care about.

27. Cranberries

Image via Flickr/liz west

Any fruit you have to cut with enough sugar to give a bull elephant Type II Diabetes is not a good fruit. If sales weren’t artificially propped up by the Thanksgiving Industrial Complex, cranberries would have died out decades ago.

26. Papaya

Image via Flickr/japanexperterna.se

Papayas taste like farts and anyone who says otherwise is insane. Or they’re just super into farts and don’t realize it yet.

25. Watermelon

Image via Flickr/Harsha K R

It’s a melon that tastes like water. The name of the fruit literally tells you that eating it is going to the most boring experience of your life. It has the same bland, mediocre taste of all the melons, except the pleasantly chewy melon flesh is replaced by barely-fruit-flavored wet sand. Is watermelon refreshing on a hot day? You bet. You know what else is refreshing on a hot day? Water.

24. Honeydew

Image via Flickr/Joy

The only thing honeydew has going for it is that it’s not watermelon.

23. Grapefruit

Image via Flickr/Liz West

Want that orange-juice-after-brushing-your-teeth flavor on the go? Grapefruit! It gets bonus points for being a key ingredient in a few tasty cocktails.

22. Blueberries

Image via Flickr/@rsseattle

Eating a handful of blueberries is a gamble no one should take. Five out of six blueberries taste fine—not great, just fine—but that sixth one is going to be unexpectedly mushy and taste like mud and it will ruin your whole day.

21. Coconut

Image via Flickr/Hafiz Issadeen

Coconut water is cool and all, but no one should need a jackhammer to eat a fruit. If a fruit is useless in its natural form, it cannot rank any higher than 21. That is how lists work.

20. Kiwi

Image via Flickr/Andreas Dantz

The flavor is on point, but kiwis are a deceptively gross fruit. They look like a nutsack and they’re sour, plus the seeds have the texture of broken lightbulb glass. Flavor only goes so far.

19. Limes

Image via Flickr/Troy Tolley

It’s not the lime’s fault, but it’s hard to rank a fruit that you can’t actually eat any higher. Limes still get a ton of points for being an integral part of dressing street tacos.

18. Lemons

Image via Flickr/Troy Tolley

Juicier limes.

17. Apricots

Image via Flickr/Pedro Fernandes

Most stone fruits are pretty solid. Apricots are the worst of them, but, still, not bad. No one’s ever been like, “Yo man, I had a mind-blowing apricot the other day.”

16. Cantaloupe

Image via Flickr/Eddie Welker

Easily the best of the melons. It’s like someone injected some personality, some character, some fucking taste into a honeydew. But being the best melon is like being the best quarterback in the Arena League. Congrats on the Arena Bowl win and all, but you and I both know that literally no one cares.

15. Raspberries

Image via Flickr/Luke Jones

Why are raspberries so dry? And why are they covered in little hairs? Raspberries should be way better than they actually are, especially considering how dope raspberry-flavored foods are. But high expectations without delivery don’t cut it. Be better, raspberries.

14. Blackberries

Image via Flickr/Dwight Sipler

If it wasn’t for all the seeds that get stuck in your teeth, blackberries would be a top 10 fruit for sure, maybe even a top five. But, man, those seeds are real annoying.

12. Nectarines

Image via Flickr/Jo Naylor

They’re just better apricots. The skin is smoother, the flesh is sweeter, and the larger size means you can get juicier and more satisfying bites. They lack the suppleness of a peach or plum, but still, not a bad effort out of nectarines.

11. Pears

Image via Flickr/Joy

Underripe pears taste like nothing, while overripe pears taste like someone pre-chewed the fruit and then stuffed it back into an oblong skin sack. But when you get a perfectly ripe Bartlett—the kind where juices run down your arm after the first bite—there are few more life-affirming fruit eating experiences.

10. Peaches

Image via Flickr/Rebecca Siegel

Juicy like mid-2000s velour sweatpants. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like the fuzzy skin isn’t weird—Fruit God works in mysterious ways—but there is no fruit that drops more of a flavor bomb on your tongue. If the concept of ripeness had a physical form, it would be a peach. This applies to yellow peaches only. White peaches and donut peaches are garbage.

9. Grapes

Image via Flickr/Luke Jones

Demetri Martin hit this one pretty squarely on the head: “If you have a crappy apple or a peach, you’re stuck with that crappy piece of fruit. But if you have a crappy grape, move onto the next one. Grapes: The fruit of hope.” Throw some grapes in the freezer for 45 minutes, pop them in your mouth, and I dare you to tell me they aren’t nature’s Slurpee balls.

8. Mango

Image via Flickr/Sean Bonus

They might have the most complex flavor of any fruit on the list. Sweet, tart, floral, and a little bit of that bacterial funk that comes with all tropical fruits, the mango is a well-rounded, pretty bomb-ass thing to eat. But, mangoes get docked for inconsistency—huge pits and stringy flesh are too common for it to be ranked any higher.

7. Strawberries

Image via Flickr/Glen Young

Strawberries do not need my endorsement. Everyone knows how good strawberries are. Strawberries even know how good strawberries are. They’re the only fruit in the berry category that has enough body and juice to create a substantial mouthfeel. The strawberry is a perfect berry-flavor delivery mechanism.

6. Plums

Image via Flickr/Hiltrud Möller-Eberth

The king of stone fruits. The interplay between the sour crunchiness of the skin and the sweet meatiness of the flesh is goddamn symphonic. It has all the juiciness of a peach, minus the skin fuzz, plus some robust jamminess.

5. Apples

Image via Flickr/Jon Fingas

Not all apples were created equal. Red Deliciouses taste like nothing, Granny Smiths are way too sour and the skin is inedible, and I’m pretty sure Golden Delciouses are actually just misshapen trash pears. But you get an insanely crisp, not too sweet, not too sour Honeycrisp, and it reaffirms your faith that apples deserve their spot in the fruit pantheon.

4. Clementines

Image via Flickr/Paul Asman & Jill Lenoble

The easily peelable skin and lack of shitty white grossness single handedly solved the problem of oranges. Way to be a fruit disruptor, clementines. The skin separates from the flesh with hardly any effort and each segment bursts in your mouth with equally sweet, equally sour orange flavor that every glass of juice aspires to be but so often falls short.

3. Cherries

Image via Flickr/bm.iphone

Cherries are great because they taste like red, and red is a great taste to have in your mouth. It makes sense when you consider that every cherry-flavored candy is the best flavor of that candy. Starburst, gummy bears, Laffy Taffy—all of them. Pits are otherwise annoying, but with cherries, they perfectly pace out your snacking and give you an easily overcomeable challenge that boosts your self-confidence.

2. Bananas

Image via Flickr/keepon i

Bananas are the cake of fruit. Next time you eat a banana, think of a vanilla scented pound cake—that’s what’s in your mouth. Anytime you’re craving something sweet but don’t want to shatter the calorie piggy bank because you know you’re trying to get down on a post-bar chimichanga at midnight, there’s a mid-day banana waiting for you. The color on the skin almost perfectly corresponds to the level of ripeness, leaving no guesswork, and it has a fully sealed case so you never have to wash it. Kirk Cameron thinks it’s an argument for intelligent design, and who am I to argue with Mike Seaver?

1. Pineapple

Image via Flickr/Kyle McDonald

If you’ve never sat down and eaten an entire pineapple all to yourself—maybe dusted in cinnamon or some Tajin chili salt—you have not lived your best life. If has all the juiciness, acid, and freshness that you love from citrus fruit, but it comes in a substantive and satisfying package. Pineapples are the fruit equivalent of a steak made out of bacon. It might honestly be in a dead heat with bananas for that #1 spot, but pineapple’s indispensability to the al pastor taco gives it the tie breaker.

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